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It’s not every day you go from Obi-Wan Kenobi to Sheev Palpatine in 24 hours. But Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos now has the distinction of having Luke (Mark Hamill) lead a boycott of the Dark Side Daily “Democracy Dies in the Dark” newspaper.
Celebrities like former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney announced this week that they had canceled their subscriptions to the paper. NPR reported Tuesday that 250,000 subscribers have severed ties with the news organization. As of this writing, the Washington Post has not confirmed the number of canceled subscriptions. Some, like anti-Trump lawyer and activist George Conway, appeared to wink at supporters and quietly target Bezos’ Amazon.
This is a familiar pattern for many of us (on a smaller scale) who have previously been associated with the left and faced cancellation of campaigns because we questioned the orthodoxy of the media or academia.
Then something fascinating happened. Bezos stood his ground.
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The left has made flash mob politics an art form, crushing opposition with threats of economic or professional ruin. Most succumb to pressure, including business leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
The record came to a screeching halt when the unstoppable force of the left met the unstoppable presence of Elon Musk. The left continues to oppose his government contracts and pressure advertisers over his refusal to reinstate the old censorship system at Company X (formerly Twitter).
Billionaire and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos recently wrote an op-ed explaining why his newspaper did not endorse a presidential candidate this year.
Now the left may be creating a new rebellious billionaire. Bezos penned an op-ed in the Washington Post this week further emphasizing his decision not to support any presidential candidate now or in the future. Some of us are argued for a newspaper company To suspend all political support for decades.
The heartening aspect of Mr. Bezos’ column is that not only did he recognize the corrosive effect his endorsements had on maintaining neutrality as a media organization, but also that the Post’s perceived bias and activism It also recognized that it was facing a steep decline in revenue and readership.
I was writing regularly in the post and new book “Our profession is now the least trusted of all professions. What we’re doing is clearly not working,” he said of the decline of newspapers as part of the “advocacy journalism” movement.
Washington Post newsroom erupts over ‘tone-deaf’ editorial defending Jeff Bezos’ non-endorsement, staff say
Bezos previously brought in a publisher to save the Post from itself.
Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis immediately unleashed a truth bomb right in the middle of the newsroom. tell the staff“Let’s not go easy on it…We’re losing a lot of money. Your audience has been cut in half over the last few years. People aren’t reading your work. Right? ?I can’t take it easy anymore.”
The reaction was that the entire staff looked stunned and many demanded that Lewis be canned. Mr. Bezos sided with Mr. Lewis.
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Currently, reporters and columnists are also resigning or criticizing the company one after another. Post columnists slammed the decision in a public statement, saying that while they may have to end their support, it’s time to stop now because everyone must stand against Trump to protect democracy and journalism. Ta. The statement drew some laughter, given the signatories included columnists. philip bump and jennifer rubinhas been repeatedly accused of reckless rhetoric. (Rubin later criticized Mr. Bezos’ “bullish explanation,” saying he was just “bending the knee” to Mr. Trump.)
What Musk did for free speech, Bezos could do for the media. He could build a bulwark against advocacy journalism at one of the world’s major newspapers. As former New York Times reporter (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nicole Hannah-Jones explained, today’s “J-school” students are being told to abandon their neutrality and objectivity. . ”All journalism is activism. ”
After a series of interviews with more than 75 media leaders, former Washington Post Editor-in-Chief Leonard Downey Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward announced in early 2023 that the Cronkite News Lab published ” This change was reconfirmed in a report called “.Beyond objectivityAs Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, put it, “Objectivity must be abandoned.”
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There are few people other than Bezos or Musk who can stand up to this movement. But the left has long created its own monsters by demanding absolute loyalty and by running absolute cancel campaigns. Simply because Mr. Bezos wants to restore neutrality to his newspaper, leftists are calling for a boycott of not only the Post but all of his companies. That’s exactly what they did with the masks.
The partnership between Bezos and Musk would be a real eye-opener. They could give the forces for restoring free speech and the press a real chance to build a beachhead to regain the ground they have lost over the past two decades.
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The left is not willing to accept anything short of total surrender, and Bezos doesn’t seem willing to pay that price. In fact, he failed to save not just the Post, but American journalism itself.
For the rest of us, all I can say is, welcome to the fight, Jeff.
Click here to read more about Jonathan Turley
